More NH jobs: Good policies are working

New Hampshire Democrats have nothing to run on for next year's election. So they are attacking Republicans for supposedly killing New Hampshire jobs. It is laughably absurd.

According to the state Democratic Party, Republicans in the Legislature are pursing a ';job-killing agenda.'; If the Republicans are trying to kill jobs, then they're extraordinarily bad at it, as their policies are having the opposite effect.

New Hampshire's unemployment rate dipped a fraction of a point last month to 5.2 percent. It was going up before that. What's been happening? State data show that employment opportunities are increasing, but as more jobs are being created in New Hampshire, more Granite Staters are starting to look for work.

As House Speaker Bill O'Brien and Ways and Means Committee Chairman Steve Stepanek wrote in this newspaper last week, ';Our unemployment hasn't fallen further because over the past three months, more than 6,500 individuals have joined the workforce. This flies in the face of national trends. Across America, unemployment fell from 9 percent to 8.6 percent because 315,000 people got discouraged and left the job market.';

More people are looking for work — and more are finding it — since the Legislature passed an austere budget that the Democrats claimed would hurt the economy. Legislators balanced the budget while cutting spending, taxes and regulations. The positive economic effects that followed would be a surprise only to blinkered liberals who mistake government activism for economic stimulus.